Not easy because it depends on the judgment of “experts”. Here’s an excerpt from Princeton historian Michael D. Gordin’s book, On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience:
First, today’s science is adversarial. The way a scientist makes her reputation is by building on past findings, but if all she does is confirm what everyone already knew, her career stagnates. The pressures in scientific research are to do something new, and that usually means refuting a tenet of contemporary science. (We detect echoes of Karl Popper’s falsificationism.) Credit in science is allocated for priority (being first) and for being more correct than your competi- tors investigating the same questions. There will always be winners and losers. If the losers persist, they can and will get shunted to the fringe.
The second reason is that science is increasingly expensive. There are limited resources to go around, and there are always too many researchers chasing after coveted grants and high-profile publication opportunities. Within a climate of scarcity, adversarial norms necessarily generate both an incentive for winners to defend their gains and resentment from those who lost. Anyone who jeopardizes your research—say, by defending a fringe theory that contradicts it—may be seen as a threat. When nonmainstream doctrines pose a threat (real or imagined) to professional scientists, the term pseudoscience gets bandied about.
Michael D. Gordin, “What belongs in the “gray area” between science and pseudoscience?” at BigThink (December 27, 2021)
And then there is Big Science vs. COVID. Anyone care to discuss?
At which point, the defense rests.
This is broadly valid but gets the history wrong.
Academia has always been orthodox. Federal funding and tenure have made the orthodoxy vastly more rigid and impenetrable, but there was never any premium on counter-orthodox results.
The dictionary definition of pseudoscience is actually valid and permanent. If the observation or experimental result is “fragile”, depending on a highly specific and contrived setup, or if the observation is only seen by one scientist and not by others using the same methods, it’s dubious.
The big powers ignore the dictionary definition and use the word to destroy what they don’t like right now. Most officially labeled “pseudosciences” have turned out to be valid after the orthodox generation died. We value the counter-orthodox in retrospect.
Denyse, you should read “The Clot Thickens”
C19 is nothing compared to the heart/LDL fiasco. When there is $1 trillion dollars in statins and $1 trillion in low fat foods, you better believe the truth will not get out.
How many know that women’s risk of heart disease goes down as their blood cholesterol goes up? Or that the LDL molecules could have nothing to do with heart disease?
All rejected by the health experts because of the money in statins and low fat foods. So the pressure to do something new can only exists if there is not money involved.
C19 vaccines are currently chump change compared to this but they are trying.
“The pressures in scientific research are to do something new”
This may be true(in some cases), but when Big Money/Big Power wants more of the same party line Climate Change or Covid marketing with scientific trappings, guess what happens?
Andrew
Actually clearer in heart research and the ignorance of findings.
In order to advance their careers, scientists do all sorts of things – leave out disconfirming data, explore multiple hypotheses with the same data, even falsify experimental results! In fact, the only thing that is less reliable than scientific conclusions are… non-scientific conclusions.
We need to always work to make science better, but don’t forget that science is simply a set of rules, practices, and institutions intended to help keep people from publishing poorly supported results or outright cheating. The fact that it isn’t 100% effective doesn’t mean it doesn’t help, obviously, just as the fact that vaccines aren’t 100% safe or effective doesn’t mean they don’t help. Without academic and professional accreditations, peer review, replication, and so on, the search for knowledge would be a free-for-all, immensely more corrupt.
“In fact, the only thing that is less reliable than scientific conclusions are… non-scientific conclusions.”
Dogdoc,
A conclusion leapt to by a Scientist that is wrong is not reliable. <—–period
Andrew
Andrew, the point is that scientific conclusions are wrong less often. Leaping to conclusions that are not checked by scientific practices and institutions is like playing tennis without a net.
Dogdoc,
I agree with you. I just want to emphasize that something presented as checked by scientific practices and institutions may not be scientifically checked, just stamped to make it look good.
Andrew
Andrew, yes you are right – marketed “scientific” claims are so often BS. What I’ve noticed though, rummaging around this site and other forums, is a tendency to disparage “mainstream science” as though it’s the source of the problem rather than an (imperfect) bulwark against a completely open market of ideas that are truly, ridiculously wrong. I’m mainly talking about “alternative medicine”, another term for medicine that has simply never been tested for safety and efficacy. And it’s not a political thing at all – we’ve got pseudo- and anti-scientific nonsense coming from all over the political spectrum.
Poll: what do you hope to gain by your participation on this site?
Thanks
–Ram
After almost a week I am still banned from commenting on a thread:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/if-math-is-a-reality-atheism-is-dead/
I have tried many, many times from different computer and having logged out. Someone has chosen to lock me out of that thread. That is clear. There really is no denying it anymore. The thing the site moderators should ask is: who has chosen to do this and why? Is that the way you want the site run? Do you want me to be respectful and reply to those who asked me questions on another thread because I’ve been blocked on the thread the questions were asked? Do you really want people to ask someone like me a question and then not get a reply because someone has thought to block?
Censorship from the people who claim they are censored is hypocritical.
Differentiating science from pseudoscience?
Afters years of debating Darwinists, and Atheistic Naturalists in general, I have come to the firm conclusion that science, at least how they practice it, is broken, and they are the ones who have broken it.
And the way that Darwinists, and Atheistic Naturalists in general, have broken science is that they have, basically, turned the inductive methodology of Francis Bacon on its head. Which is to say that they have, basically, turned the entire scientific method itself on its head.
But first, to lay out the necessary, essential, Judeo-Christian presuppositions that lay behind the founding of modern science
Although the Judeo-Christian presuppositions of “The contingency of nature”, and “The intelligibility of nature”, are obviously necessary, even essential, presuppositions for the practice of modern science, (and although atheists illegitimately assume those Christian presuppositions without any philosophical basis within their naturalistic worldview for doing so, (Paul Davies, Nancy Pearcey)), I hold that the inductive methodology which Francis Bacon introduced, (via his Christian presupposition of man’s fallen nature, i.e. original sin, as a check and balance against “self-deception, flights of fancy, and jumping to conclusions”), is the main place where atheistic naturalists have, basically, turned the entire scientific method itself on its head, i.e. it is where they have ‘broken science’.
Darwinists simply ignore inductive reasoning, especially when it conflicts with their a-priori assumption of atheistic naturalism.
You see the ‘bottom up’ inductive reasoning which Francis Bacon championed, (where the premises of your argument are held provisionally, i.e. where one’s assumptions about the universe are held to be falsifiable by experimentation), is, practically speaking, a completely different form of reasoning than the ‘top down’ deductive reasoning of the ancient Greeks in which they “pronounced on how the world should behave, with insufficient attention to how the world in fact did behave.”
And the ‘bottom up’ inductive methodology of Francis Bacon, (a devout Christian), that lies at the basis of the scientific method has indeed been very, very, fruitful for man in gaining accurate knowledge of the universe in that repeated experiments lead to more “exacting, and illuminating”, conclusions than is possible with the quote-unquote, “educated guesses” that followed from Aristotle’s deductive form of reasoning.
And again, atheistic naturalists, especially Darwinian atheists, have, basically, turned science itself on its head, i.e. have ‘broken science’, by forsaking the ‘bottom up’ inductive methodology of Francis Bacon.
As Dr. Richard Nelson, in his book Darwin, Then and Now, noted, Charles Darwin, in his book ‘Origin of Species’, “selected the deductive method of reasoning – and abandoned the inductive method of reasoning.”
Likewise Richard Owen, in a review of Charles Darwin’s book shortly after it was published, had found that Charles Darwin, as far as inductive methodology itself was concerned, had failed to produce “inductive original research which might issue in throwing light on ‘that mystery of mysteries.’.
In other words, Darwin had failed to produce any original experimental research that might support his theory for the “Origin of Species”.
And on top of Richard Owen’s rather mild rebuke of Darwin for failing to use inductive methodology, Adam Sedgwick was nothing less than scathing of Darwin for deserting, “after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth – the true method of induction, and started us in machinery as wild, I think, as Bishop Wilkins’s locomotive that was to sail with us to the moon.”
Adam Sedgwick also called Darwin out for being misleading in exactly what form of reasoning he was using in his book.
Specifically, Adam Sedgwick scolded Darwin that “Many of your wide conclusions are based upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved, why then express them in the language and arrangement of philosophical induction?”
And it was not as if Charles Darwin was ignorant of the fact that he had failed to follow Bacon’s inductive methodology, or that he was being misleading, even deceptive, in exactly what form of reasoning he was using,
Charles Darwin himself, two years prior to the publication of his book, confessed to a friend that “What you hint at generally is very very true, that my work will be grievously hypothetical & large parts by no means worthy of being called inductive; my commonest error being probably induction from too few facts.”
In short, when Darwin published his book, and in regards to inductive reasoning itself, Darwin did not do, or have, any original experimental research that would actually establish his theory as being scientifically true. i.e. Darwin had failed to use the scientific method!
As Neil Thomas recently noted in his article entitled “Darwinian Theory: Science or Speculative Philosophy?”, “Bottom line: Darwin did not have a single scrap of empirical fieldwork to document his conjectures.”
And over a century and a half later the situation still has not changed one iota. To this day, Darwinists still have no experimental research that would establish Darwin’s theory as being scientifically true.
As Dr Richard Nelson also noted in his book Darwin, Then and Now, “After 150 years of research,,, the scientific evidence is clear: there are no “successive, slight” changes in the fossil record, embryology, molecular biology, or genetics to support Darwinism or neo-Darwinism.”
In fact there are many lines of experimental evidence that, besides contradicting Darwin’s theory, directly falsify core presuppositions of Darwin’s theory. (And yet Darwinists, at least the ones I’ve dealt with, simply don’t care that their theory has been falsified in its core presuppositions time and time again, and continue to dogmatically believe Darwinian evolution to be true anyway)
Dr. Cornelius Hunter has evaluated 22 specific predictions that are fundamental to Darwin’s theory and has found that when those specific predictions were tested and evaluated against the experimental evidence then those fundamental predictions of Darwin’s theory were found to be false.
And here is my own list of falsifications of core presuppositions of Darwin’s theory which Darwinists simply ignore, (a list which I have compiled after years of debating Darwinists):
Since Darwinists, by and large and as far as I can tell, ignore the inductive methodology of Francis Bacon, (i.e. specifically ignoring the ‘principle of falsification’ by experimentation), that lies behind the scientific method itself, it is clear that Darwin’s theory is to be classified, far more, as being a pseudo-science, even as a religion for atheists, than it is to be classified as a hard and testable science.
As Robert Marks and company have demonstrated, Darwinian evolution simply does not have a ‘hard core’ that can be tested,
Moreover, the main presupposition that Darwinian atheists simply refuse to ever let be challenged by experimental evidence is their main presupposition of Atheistic Naturalism itself.
Yet, ironically, if, for the sake of argument, we falsely assume Atheistic Naturalism as being true, (as atheistic naturalists are intent on us doing), then that false presupposition of theirs leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of, not only of science itself, but also of our entire conception of reality itself.,
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist and/or Methodological Naturalist may firmly, and falsely, believe that he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for naturalistic explanations over and above God as a viable explanation), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists themselves are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
So thus in conclusion, and in short, Atheistic Naturalists in general, and Darwinian atheists in particular, have, basically, ‘broken science’ by forsaking the inductive methodology of Francis Bacon and insisting that their ‘deductive’ presupposition of Atheistic Naturalism cannot ever be challenged and/or overturned, by empirical evidence and/or observation.
Yet again, and to repeat, It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Science, at least how atheists practice it, is broken, and atheists are the one who have broken it, and to fix science, at least how they practice it, it is necessary to throw out none other than atheistic naturalism itself as a supposedly unquestionable (deductive) presupposition.
Verse:
Well, no surprise that no one cares at all that I have been blocked from commenting on a thread for no discernible reason. I have tried all the normal solutions and they didn’t work.
Unless someone can show a clear and documentable cause why shouldn’t I assume it’s a case of censorship?
I bet no one will even comment. No one cares. Figures.
“I bet no one will even comment. No one cares. Figures.”
JVL,
I’m commenting just to demonstrate how wrong you are again. 😉
Andrew
Asauber: I’m commenting just to demonstrate how wrong you are again. ?
And what are you going to do? Anything? Or just try and score points as usual?
“And what are you going to do? Anything? Or just try and score points as usual?”
JVL,
I’m going to entertain myself by exchanging some comments with you.
Andrew
Asauber: I’m going to entertain myself by exchanging some comments with you.
So, you agree with censorship?
“So, you agree with censorship?”
JVL,
I don’t. But I don’t know if this is a case of censorship, and I am just a commenter here, so I have no ability to do anything about it, if it is.
Andrew
Asauber: I don’t. But I don’t know this is a case of censorship, and I am just a commenter here. so I have no ability to do anything about it, if it is.
You could ask questions. You could try and see if it’s true. But you won’t because you don’t care.
So, why should I care if ID proponents are shut out from commenting on unguided evolutionary blogs? I’m just a commenter, what can I do?
Should any of us care or try and change things? Do you care? Will you make an attempt to change things?
“So, why should I care if ID proponents are shut out from commenting on unguided evolutionary blogs? I’m just a commenter, what can I do?”
JVL,
I’m not suggesting or demanding that you care about ID proponents commenting on blogs. I myself don’t care enough about them to complain, that’s for sure.
You see, complaining to a brick wall is not productive. I’m much more interested in doing something constructive in realms where I can do something constructive.
Engaging with you is sometimes constructive, therefore, here am I.
Andrew
Asauber: ’m not suggesting or demanding that you care about ID proponents commenting on blogs. I myself don’t care enough about them to complain, that’s for sure.
Okay.
You see, complaining to a brick wall is not productive. I’m much more interested in doing something constructive in realms where I can do something constructive.
Engaging with you is sometimes constructive, therefore, here am I.
Okay. But checking to see if I’m being censored is not constructive? The people who replied to my posts not getting replies from me is okay? Stifling dialogue is fine with you?
If you think engaging is sometimes constructive then you should support that happening and decry any hint of censorship. Yes?
“Okay. But checking to see if I’m being censored is not constructive? The people who replied to my posts not getting replies from me is okay? Stifling dialogue is fine with you?”
JVL,
I wouldn’t know who to check with, and I consider it too small of a problem on the scale of things to be concerned.
Andrew
JVL, I honestly think that it is just a quirk with your computer and WordPress. I have been critical of KF’s nonsense for a couple months and I have never had a problem commenting.
Asauber: I wouldn’t know who to check with, and I consider it too small of a problem on the scale of things to be concerned.
So, essentially, you just don’t care enough to do anything. Got it.
Joe Schooner: I honestly think that it is just a quirk with your computer and WordPress. I have been critical of KF’s nonsense for a couple months and I have never had a problem commenting.
Well, how is it that I can’t post a comment to a particular thread after days and days but I can to other ones? I get a site-generated 403 error generated by a Word Press extension designed for security?
Why is is wrong to query the site admins until they figure it out? Does it happen to you? Does it happen to you for days and days only on particular threads?
I get that nobody really cares but how do you know it’s not censorship?
Authors of any OP can ban people posting on their threads. Is it always the same author on threads that you can’t post? Are his initials KF? ?
JVL. I assume you have cleared your caches and tried different browsers?
JS, ad hominem nonsense showing malice. As has been long since advised, UD has not granted banning from a given thread by technical means. Technical bans are at site level, and are generally for cause of trollish, willfully insistent trollish conduct. KF
JVL, please recall my comments to you on peculiar cases on particular threads or even comments. WP is imperfect software and there are plug ins and other packages involved; we work with what we have and updates are notorious for breaking things, BTW as at yesterday yet another version increment was pending. Weird things can and do happen with software and especially when the software keeps on being updated from source. Were you actually banned, that would take effect site-wide. KF
JVL, given that he is convinced that his inability to comment on kf’s thread is not a bug with his system, comments for several posts now on how unfair it is that he is being, (supposedly), blocked from commenting on kf’s thread. He goes so far as to complain that ID proponents ‘just don’t care’ that he is supposedly being treated unfairly.
But wait a cotton picking minute, JVL is a Darwinist. A dogmatic Darwinist at that. And as such JVL must hold that, (morally speaking), “some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.”
JVL adamantly wants justice, i.e. he adamantly wants ‘moral fairness’, yet JVL’s own Darwinian worldview affords him no such luxury as ‘moral fairness’. In fact, apparently unbeknownst to JVL, every time he himself cries ‘it is unfair’, he is in fact providing evidence for the existence objective morals and therefore providing evidence for the existence for God.
As Dr. Craig put it, “Every time you say, “Hey, that’s not fair! That’s wrong; that’s an injustice! You affirm your belief in the existence of objective morals.” Yet “if God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.”
Darwinian atheists, with their reductive materialistic framework, are forced to claim that objective morality doesn’t actually exist and that it is ‘nothing but’ an illusion,
Again, Darwinian atheists are forced to deny to reality of objective morality.
And although there are a number of physical evidences that can be brought to bear on the fact that morality is objectively real, (I will hold off on listing the specific physical evidences right now), I find the fact that it is impossible for atheists themselves to live their lives as if objective morality does not actually exist to be one of the most powerful evidence for the existence of objective morality, and therefore to be another powerful evidence for the existence of God.
As JVL’s own protestations of ‘moral unfairness’ make clear, it is impossible for atheists to consistently live their own lives as if objective morality does not actually exist.
As the following article succinctly states the situation for atheists: “Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath.”
And in the following article Nancy Pearcey quotes a professor emeritus at MIT who states that he does not treat his children as Darwinian ‘machines’ but instead treats them with “unconditional love”.
Even Richard Dawkins himself honestly admitted that it would be quote unquote ‘intolerable’ for him to live his life as if his atheistic materialism were actually true and as if there were no moral accountability for what people do.
This impossibility for atheists to live their lives consistently as if atheistic materialism is actually true is powerful evidence that the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be true.
Specifically, if it is impossible for you to live your life consistently as if atheistic materialism were actually true, then atheistic materialism cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but atheistic materialism must instead be based on a delusion.
Verse:
I find it ironic that someone who understands the mathematics of Einstein’s relativity is befuddled by a web browser?
JVL accused me of wanting to score points as my motivation for commenting here.
I think repeated crying about censorship is an attempt at point-scoring for JVL.
Andrew
JVL, just for record, I cannot ban you from my threads using some thread ban button that does not exist. I have not seen comments from you and invisibly removed them or whatever such a manually operated ban would look like. KF
Kairosfocus, Asauber, Jerry, and Viola Lee: I am an experienced computer and web user; I have tried every means I can think of to make sure it’s not my system which is causing the problem. I just tried again, by the way, and more than a week after I first got stopped from posting on:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/if-math-is-a-reality-atheism-is-dead/
I am still not allowed to post.
Because I’ve tried different computers and different browsers it’s either because of my account or my domain/IP that is causing the issue. Here is part of the ‘error’ I get:
Clearly implying that the cause must be something the site owner can do something about. Hence I’ve been complaining in hope.
Also, the particular WordPress plugin or extension that is generating this ‘error’ is called WordFence and quoting again from the error message:
Again, the clear inference is that the site owner can do something about the situation.
From the website wordfence.com:
So, it is possible to configure WordFence to block human activity. Like posting? From a particular IP?
I am quite sure that Kairosfocus is being completely honest and sincere; I am quite familiar with the ways he handles situations he finds disruptive or counterproductive (having crossed his lines a few times in the past) so I know he has nothing to apologise for. In fact, I give him credit for taking the time to respond.
Perhaps it’s just my IP but then why aren’t I blocked site-wide? If it’s my browser then, again, why isn’t the problem site-wide?
If the problem is coming from WordFence, as seems clear, then perhaps it would be good for the person who actually maintains the site via WordPress (through a browser or an app, I’ve done both) to look at the WordFence settings and see why such a thing is happening, why for some people but not others and, in my case, only on one thread.
If it’s an error then it could happen to anyone and should be corrected. I would think someone would want to look into that.
You forgot to mention about experienced troll.
@JVL: In order to find out whether the problem is due to your IP address, you could use the Tor browser or a VPN.
BA77 @ 32
This is one of Craig’s most misleading sophistries. Craig knows full well that objective morality is not sourced in “God.” Thus premise (1) is not true. It would take me a while to find it, but a few years back, Craig ran a post on his blog showing that he understands the distinction between absolute morality and objective morality. This first is “God-given,” the second is a human construction that has evolved as human cultures have evolved.
Craig says he eschews the more proper term “absolute morality” because it causes confusion with the terms “objective,” “relative” and “subjective” morality. This is a dodge, but that is for another debate.
God’s or absolute morality is (1) universal, (2) imposed by divine fiat, (3) non-negotiable and (4) applied without exceptions, in other words absolute. (Duh…)
On the other hand, objective morality is (1) culture specific, (2) imposed either explicitly or implicitly, by human authorities, such as kings, churches, despots, legislatures, direct democracy, etc. (3) subject to compromise, or, in extreme cases, displacement through revolt and (4) subject to mitigation in appropriate cases.
Christian apologetics is stuck in this quagmire, and it is really getting annoying watching the enterprise hopelessly spinning its wheels throwing around inane bromides dressed up as syllogisms.
Chuck Darwin, you are, as usual, wrong. Morality is objectively real, not subjective, illusory, and/or manmade as you hold. For one example out of many, the way your own genetic responses have been designed by God to subtly differentiate between ‘hedonic’ moral happiness and ‘noble’ moral happiness testifies to the objective reality of morality.
Of course ChuckyD, to refute the claim that God designed our genetic responses to subtly differentiate between ‘hedonic’ moral happiness and ‘noble’ moral happiness you could simply demonstrate that Darwinian processes have the capacity within themself to create, say, a single gene and/or protein. But alas, no such demonstration seems to ever be forthcoming for you.
JVL, you have probably persuaded WordFence’s algorithms you are some sort of spammer or the like; you managed to fit some profile. WF has locked me up on individual threads before. I don’t know if in doing so it locked up the whole local zone! KF
CD, there is a discussion in progress, I will cross-thread a clip I got from the late Professor Dallas Willard’s video presentation I just found, on disappearance of moral knowledge:
https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/lfp-48a-is-the-denial-of-objective-moral-truth-an-implicit-truth-claim-about-duty-to-right-conduct-etc-thus-subject-to-reductio/#comment-744907
And BTW, WLC is pointing out precisely the branch on which we all sit inescapability of Ciceronian first duties of reason, even when we have managed to culturally marginalise the underlying warrant and knowledge base. Something I have been pointing out for months only to meet the sort of rhetorical flak that says we are over a sensitive, high value target.
KF
PS: The Ciceronian first duties:
1st – to truth,
2nd – to right reason,
3rd – to prudence [including warrant],
4th – to sound conscience,
5th – to neighbour; so also,
6th – to fairness and
7th – to justice
[ . . .]
xth – etc
PPS, BTW, CD, our moral knowledge will be OBJECTIVE by and large as we are error prone so need to seek warrant to arrive at reliable results, but warrant seldom delivers utter certainty beyond correction. The lurking Euthyphro dilemma in your comment runs into the gap between pagan supermen gods and the necessary, maximally great, inherently good and utterly wise root of reality and creator of ethical theism. God commends and commands the right as he is good and wise, where as wisdom can be communicated to creatures in his image, even in tiny part, the goodness can be in material part intelligible and seen to be warranted; save to those too locked into errors, rage, resentment, lusts and benumbing of moral sense to acknowledge it. Where, part of our endowment, conscience, cannot be implicitly marginalised as suspect of delusion, as conscience being pervasive that would carry our whole self aware, intelligent inner life under the taint of grand delusion. More can be said, this is enough to provoke reflective thought.